Harrell: Painful memories

It’s been 16 years since first one and then another plane smashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on lower Manhattan’s riverfront.

Even after all this time, it still seems surreal watching news films of that morning.

Remembering the immensity of the buildings, not only the height, but the concrete vastness of the perimeters, how small you felt simply being in their shadow, it seemed impossible that structures so powerful would prove so vulnerable.

Only a few weeks ago, I was there in New York City and visited The National September 11 Memorial and Museum. Designed by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker; the design was chosen from more than 5,200 entries from 63 nations. Impressive. Just standing and looking down into one of the two memorial pools that mark the tower footprint, pools whose sides are engraved with victims’ names, water cascading into oblivion, pulls at my heart. Oddly enough, it reminds me of the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

The towers are gone. True. The sunny day my friends and I had lunch at a corner table at Windows of the World is only a memory. That day, we took the ferry over from Hoboken and I can remember walking and walking for what seemed forever before we even got to the entrance of the tower where security checked our bags. Everything was bigger than big. We had to take two elevators to get to the restaurant on the top floor. Dolores came back from the ladies’ room laughing about the stainless-steel sinks that looked like urinals. Such modern decor.

Strange, the things you remember. On my first visit to the museum I asked a guard, “where should I go?” “The fire engine,” he said. And I did. On my second visit, a year later, I discovered the cafe upstairs where a latte soothed a fractured spirit.

This last visit, my third, I knew exactly what I wanted to see, the steps, the survivor steps.

Entering the museum, you pass through a security system equal to any airline procedure. You walk into an open hall, one of those high ceiling marbled echoing places familiar to museums and libraries. There were audio guides available at a counter. I walked straight past over to where I approached a young man wearing an ID badge. “Can you please tell me how to find the survivor steps?” I asked.

He gave me the sweetest smile and said, “I’ll take you.” And he led me through the hall to the elevator and we went down and out and around and there they were, a massive chunk of concrete, steps that had saved lives of those who had remembered steps they had used so often as a short cut to work, steps that bypassed the elevators and emptied onto the concourse to safety. Truly, survivor steps.

In the greyish mass under faint diffused light, you could clearly see some of the steps, still recognizable, still defined, because they had been protected by an overhang and then there is only crushed cement where later, the steps had been mangled by falling tons of debris.

This is not an easy museum to visit. At least, not at first, until you realize that these remnants of life, the broken pieces, the melted twisted beams tortured into ungainly shapes, the pictures of destruction carefully, respectfully displayed, all infuse a bonding, a patriotism, a feeling that we Americans, like those steps, may be somewhat crushed, but, there can be no doubt, we are survivors.